The story becomes more ridiculous

No, the story talks about the evils of this Browser Check page on the Shutterfly site. Here's what it actuallly says:

We see that you are using a browser that is not currently supported by Shutterfly. The currently supported browsers are:

• Netscape Navigator 4.08 to 4.72 for MacOS, Windows and Linux
  or
• Internet Explorer 4.0 or newer for Windows, 4.5 or newer for MacOS
  or
• AOL 5.0 or newer for Macintosh and Windows

If you are using iCab, Opera, Mozilla or any browser currently in beta, you may run into the following problems:

And it goes on to list the problems. So what do these folks see as a problem?

They don't like that the site doesn't necessarily work with new browsers. It works with existing browsers. In fact the browsers listed make up at least 99% of the browser market share. No, they complain that it has some problems with brand new browsers. Brand new browsers with essentially zero market share.

So Shutterfly should -- out of the goodness of their hearts -- support these brand-new browsers. For which they'll earn the undying loyalty of -- oh -- 10% of the three dozen Opera users out there.

I know a solution! Remember that the web always has open source. Fire up IE, do a view source and grab down their DHTML and other code. Go for it. Then find where that code dies in your favorite browser. And fix it! Fix it and send them the fix. Then -- if they're feeling generous enough to add another complicated branch and corresponding maintenance headache to their code -- maybe you can use your beloved Mozilla or iCab.

Software is not free. Software is not perfect. Browsers will always have imperfect standards compliance. It makes no sense whatsoever to force all developers to jump through hoops when the alternative is that you simply download a free copy of a compliant browser and use it. Of course, there's a danger in that. You might notice how much faster IE boots than Netscape, or how much better pages look, or how much faster they render.

What would you rather Shutterfly work on: Mozilla or making their site more easily accessible to the handicapped? Should they focus their energies on adding red-eye removal to iCab (Mac only) or on adding better image manipulation features?

Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

3:43:51 PM  comment []    

Sites bow to Microsoft's browser king

Non-agnostic Web sites "are saying, 'We're only interested in people if they use this browser,'" said Janet Daly, a representative for standards group the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). "That's a mistake on their part. The browser is a basic utility for people, and it's about having access to information regardless of who made that information or what authoring tool they used."

The call for Web authors to comply with standards comes as a new wave of competitors seeks to dislodge Microsoft from its perch as the No. 1 browser maker. IE is used by more than 85 percent of all Web surfers by many counts, and may go even higher. One recent study showed it with 95 percent share.

This breaks down into two separate arguments: economic and techno-political. The techno-political arguments against Microsoft hegemony have been mooted to death and I can't add anything interesting, but I'd like to address the economic issues.

For a company like Shutterfly, the economic argument is the most compelling. The people who have digital cameras, scanners, and would use their service don't use an old version of Netscape as their browser. Bottom line. It makes zero economic sense for them to trade even one feature for Netscape support.

In my work, my boss is still using Netscape 4.7 as his main browser. He wants to make sure that the site will work for those folks, even though they represent only about 9% of our total hits (and half of those are probably him).

I think I can conservatively say that 75% of our design work and the conversion, formatting, and tweaking of content comes directly from the work-arounds that we have to do because we choose to make Netscape 4.7 pages look the same as those in IE.

This means that I have wasted spent several weeks in the past year beating my head against four year old Netscape bugs, rather than building new revenue-producing features for my employer. I think this is a net loss, both to my employer, and to the world.

My story is not uncommon among web developers. Ask almost any one of us and you'll hear that Netscape 4 compatibility is the biggest headache around. And know what? I don't mind headaches. I'm a programmer and I thrive on headaches. There's nothing better than the feeling you get when you figure out a solution. To most problems. Supporting Netscape is more like a toothache. You can get rid of it eventually, but it's horrible before you get to the dentist, and in this case, you know that no matter how well you brush and floss and take care of your mouth, it can happen again at any time.

Supporting Netscape 4 is a burdensome, regressive, inappropriate tax on web development. It's very much like requiring that any new hydrogen-powered vehicles also be able to run on gasoline. And diesel fuel.   

10:16:29 AM  comment []